The Hours Unchronicled
by Shadow Logic
Summary: On how Naveen's parents arrived so soon for the wedding and other such mysteries.
1. Tarotism

_Credit to author and illustrator Tomie dePaola for Strega Nona, and the Disney Wiki for assorted facts - like how Maldonia's language is derived from Italian._

* * *

Their Majesties, King Adalfieri and Queen Elisabetta of Maldonia, had hardly been intrusive parents. They allowed Naveen free reign of his time outside royal obligations and lessons, free use of the allowance granted to him as Crown Prince, and free right of associating with whom he desired. They (and the prince's wet nurse, and nannies, and chaperones, and tutors, and bodyguards) had raised a child with fair use of reason, they believed, and was therefore entitled to their trust.

Which was why they were glad for the fourteen year gap between Naveen and Raphaele, for God help them, they had learned from their mistakes.

After, by royal decree, Naveen's allowance was cut to cover but the basic necessities, and by royal decree announced that Naveen was to travel to the United States under the guise of attending the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, Queen Elisabetta scoured the court for someone who could, by means physical or magical (or even illegal) put a bell on their wayward firstborn. Letters were slow, wires unreliable when left to Naveen's discretion, and anything less than constant vigilance made their hearts cold with terror. Which was how, after countless disappointments, attempted forgeries, and even one memorable failed assassination, Naveen's old nanny came forth from the very southernmost ends of the kingdom with an ancient woman with placid eyes in tow.

The woman, who answered only to Strega Nona was old, gentle, and intent on listening rather than bludgeoning the King and Queen with her own knowledge. In fact, she listened to their paternal dilemma so patiently that King Adalfieri eventually forgot he was speaking to one of his subjects and not the Queen Mother (may she rest in peace).

"- and the girls, Strega Nona, the _girls_. Just last week we have had father and uncles and brothers and- and _second cousins_ demanding their right to challenge Naveen to a duel. Were it not for the diplomatic engagement in New Orleans he would be dead or a fugitive, and I cannot begin to decide which I'd prefer." The king sagged desperately on the velvet cushions as his wife tenderly combed his gray forelocks.

"We have limited his income, taken away his privileges." Added the queen with resignation. "But the greatest inventions of man speak more of his laziness than his intelligence, no?" She sighed. "If there is a way to live in comfort without our help, he will find it. All we ask, dear woman, is that you allow us to follow his steps."

Strega Nona nodded gravely. "You have been permissive. You have been perhaps too absent. But you must not lose hope." From her reticule, she produced a worn deck of playing cards. The king barely hid a roll of his eyes (how many tarotists had come to their doors?) and was ready to sit through an hour of grandiose vagaries when Strega Nona dealt herself the cards. Or rather, when the deck flourished into a complex design – without a single touch.

"Let us see…the prince is lazy. He is a terribly prolific flirt - ah, he is at port, serenading the Duchess of Scordia with poetry as he bids her goodbye, expect a stern letter from her husband – and he has plans, yes. Marrying a young woman who is rich. A fitting solution for a man so used to sweetening the female ear." Strega Nona cast a few more cards. "He shall be met in the ship by Lawrence Malvolio, whom you have appointed Royal Valet. Hmm." Strega Nona snatched up her cards (or rather ordered them back into the box with an elegant sweep) and turned her chair towards their majesties. Politely ignoring the King while he wiped the unbecoming shock from his face, Strega Nona addressed the Queen. "This Lawrence, he is the brother to Count Malvolio? Yes? Well, you would do well to check the good Count's tax regime. As for our wayward young prince, allow him to reach his final destination. I am afraid that, clear as his objectives appear to himself, he does not really know what he wants! Summon me again in three weeks when the ship has touched port." She bowed deeply.

"Signora, your payment-"

"Summon me again in three weeks' time, Your Highness. Have a good evening."

* * *

Three weeks later, after Count Malvolio was imprisoned over the impoverished state of his countymen and the excessive taxation was dealt with, Strega Nona was once more seated at the table set up for her in the queen's boudoir. The cards flew from their box once more.

"The prince has wasted no time indeed. He has his sights set on Charlotte La Bouff, sole heir of the La Bouff sugar plantations –quite prolific – and the young lady has her sights set on a prince, whichever his name or his kingdom might be. Handsome pair, I fear." Even Strega Nona had to shake her head. "But I dither. What has happened to Count Malvolio?"

"He was found to be a cruel slavedriver to his countymen and imprisoned. As per your warning, Strega Nona." The king was halting, for had the witch truly forgotten?

"Good good. I fear the hunger for gold runs in the family, however…"

The queen gasped. "Lawrence, you mean? How? Naveen is all but destitute!"

"Yes. But a man…a man wreathed in skulls, will plant in him the idea of becoming the young lady La Bouff's husband. He will wear Naveen's face. A feat that, given certain means, is…easy." And with that, Strega Nona briefly changed her face into that of a young boy's. The illusion lasted seconds. The King's heart jumped like a child's spring toy.

"We must go rescue Naveen! Arrange for a detachment of guards! Request his extradition!"

"Why did I not insist he take his aunt Ferdinanda as chaperone instead!?" The Queen clutched at her head in despair.

"The prince treads dark waters. And yet…" Two cards were dealt. Then three. Then four. And then Strega Nona's eyes shone. "No. You will do no such thing."

"You would have us leave our son at the mercy of a conman! Dear Strega Nona…!"

"He will not be alone." Strega Nona tapped her fingers. Three cards flew out from the deck. "He will have friends. A…very kind man of the country…a very gifted young…musician…and a hard-working young woman." She drew another card. "Fear not. They shall save him."

The queen looked on in awe. The King did not consider himself the foremost authority on tarot cards, but the "gifted musician" card looked astonishingly green and pointy-teethed to his untrained eyes. Then again, the matronly old witch had not led them astray yet.

Strega Nona drew a final card – and gasped. But she ordered her cards back into the box right quick after that. "You must wait for a week, and then set out for the United States. You will accept your son's explanations as best you can. And above all," she added with a smile "remember to take deep breaths."

"Signora, your pay! Will you not accept even a coin?"

Strega Nona hesitated for a second. Then she smiled and said. "Not a coin. But perhaps, if she finds a way to make them last the journey…do ask, when you meet Miss Tiana, that she see if she might send with you a few beignets."


	2. A Proper Courtship

_...or how Tiana's mother took to suddenly finding her daughter married._

* * *

Four days.

It had been four torturous days since Tiana had marched out the door positively glowing over her pastry boxes _("just this last late night Mama, and that'll be that!"_). Eudora had kissed her cheek, adjusted the veil on the headpiece _("I wish youd'a let me do something nice with your hair for a change"_), given her a hug fit to crush and sent her on her way.

The La Bouff masquerade had ended, the city was mad with Mardi Gras preparations, and missing person's reports, particularly for young, female, "colored" people, as the good officer had stressed, were generally disregarded. Young female 'colored' people were likely off gallivanting with friends, and worried mothers of said young, female, 'colored' people were advised to wait until Ash Wednesday at the least to make such reports.

Anyone who'd met Tiana twice in their life would have laughed in their faces at the mere thought of her gallivanting, alone or with friends.

In fact, so many neighbors had done just that when she'd knocked on their doors asking for news on her daughter that a small search party had gone as far into the bayou as the swampy lands allowed, friends had asked for her at work, but the absolute last person to see her in person were Georgia and the boys, serving flapjacks at Duke's (_the last to see her alive_, said a poisonous little voice in her head). She'd called in sick at Cal's (a first for her), and had not showed at all.

She had thought about involving Charlotte. Eli La Bouff had never been anything but kind to both her and Tia, perfectly tolerant of their friendship, and she knew a plea for help would have Charlotte marching into the police station and demanding, with all her trademark exuberance, that search parties, men, dogs, horses, boats be dispatched immediately to find Tia, even with the nasty business involving the royal impersonator going on. But a picture, a description would have to be provided, and when they took once glance at Eudora, it'd be back to square one. Daddy La Bouff had sway, Charlotte had more spirit than a barrel of moonshine, but even they wouldn't be able to stir up the police over one lost –

There was a knock on the door, and Eudora had stopped asking who after day one.

"Mama."

"Oh Tiana-" And no more was said for a while as Tiana let herself be checked over twice, like she was five again and she'd lost herself in the crowd down Bourbon Street for a little too long.

"Tiana…where-what're you wearin'?" Because other than still having all the necessary limbs, Tiana was definitely not wearing the High Middle Ages gown she'd seen her in last. The voluminous dress she wore now was pale yellow and green silk (smooth, light, genuine silk that looked like it could be Mulberry), stayed up without any sort of hoop, glowed despite not having a single sequin in it, and had stitches so small and precise, Eudora could've sworn they weren't there at all.

"Oh Mama, I don't even know where I'd begin explainin', but I'm so sorry I just vanished, but just lemme explain…" Eudora thought she heard the clearing of a throat and her daughter's entire demeanor changed. "Right. Sorry." She held out a hand to someone who was tucked just behind her doorjamb, and a handsome young man wearing a striking jacket with buttons like braided vines stepped into the dim light of the cottage.

"Um." He looked at her so awkwardly, it should've been funny. "'Ello. I am…Naveen. Hi."

"Naveen? As in Prince Naveen of Maldonia, Charlotte's ex-fiance? You were all over the papers." The papers actually said that a man by the name of Lawrence Malvolio, Royal Valet, had been impersonating the prince, who was presumed missing (possibly kidnapped for ransom). But people had puzzled over the why's and how's of a short, fat old man impersonating a young man of 21 perfectly enough to fool the entire La Bouff household. The why's and how's of his fooling Charlotte caused…significantly less debate. Poor Charlotte! The girl wasn't as dense as all her cooing and screeching would suggest, but flash her a tiara and she didn't have the good sense God gave a goose.

"Um. Yes! About that." The prince looked around, as if somewhere amidst their cluttered foyer-living room he'd find the words he was desperately needing.

Tiana laughed. "Told ya it'd be all over the papers." Naveen admitted her gentle barb and gave her a very particular smile, laying his fingers lightly on her exposed shoulder. And while Eudora had only seen the boy once before, on the front page of the papers, the winsome smile he'd given the camera lacked the…substance that the smile he directed at her daughter had now. Which was nothing to say of the smile Tiana was giving him in return. She hadn't seen her glow like that since before James left for the frontline.

And while Eudora had slept poorly and fitfully, she wasn't the best seamstress in the Crescent City for giggles. The matching colors, the delicate veil attached to the tiara, the cape. Why, if she hadn't known better…

Naveen was pulling up the chair in front of the window for her. "I must insist you take a seat for the…story. You will get tired, standing and listening and…please?" If she didn't know better, she'd have thought they expected her to faint.

* * *

Ten minutes of hemming and hawing, one shouted phrase and one near swoon later, Tiana was kneeling on the floor next to her chair and Naveen (her son-in-law, sakes alive!) had dashed into the kitchen-sewing room for a glass of whiskey.

"I knew it. We should have started at the beginning and worked our way through!" He heard him say amidst the tinkling of glasses.

"I don't think there _was_ an easy way." Tiana looked suitably ashamed as she fanned her with one of the older issues of Women's International Cookery that had been lingering on her sewing machine. "Oh Mama, I'm so sorry-"

"_Married_? Really Tiana, married? I know I've been naggin' you about grandkids, but three days?" Short courtships weren't exactly strange around their neck of the woods, but that usually happened when you'd been the neighbor or the childhood playmate or even the nasty pigtail-puller of your fiancé. And three days was scandalous, even then. A pair of forest green boots entered her line of vision as Naveen returned with the drink.

"Kindly drink, some acqua vitae will do you good." His accent was strange and lilting, making his i's longer and his words enunciated. A charmer's tones. "We were sort of not expecting to live very long, madame…signora…" Naveen's feet wove nervously.

She would have insisted on Mrs. Thompson, but the boy was related to her now, wasn't he? "Eudora is just fine, darlin'."

"Lovely name, Eudora." Oh yes, a charmer's tones for sure. "You see, the average swamp frog lives very little. In the wild, we were to have what? Four years? The prince of Caserta had a pet frog that lived seven, though-"

"We even asked Mama Odie if she could give us a hand, but she said messin' with the natural order of things is what landed us in trouble in the first place."

"And Mama Odie is…?"

"The voodoo priestess. The good one. The bad one was the Shadow Man, and he's…not gonna bother us no more."

"Mama Odie was the one who married you?" If she could destroy evil shadow creatures, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, but if they'd been married by the grace of some heathen magical idol bent on turning them into something worse than frogs...

"Yes, though I think all she said was 'by the power vested in me'. Did she not say just that? Tiana?"

"Yeah. She also pronounced us 'frog and wife', so maybe it wasn't exactly legally bindin'?"

"No ma bichette, I am sure it was binding, otherwise would not have turned human after we-" Eudora's head snapped up. "After the vows." Naveen smiled guiltily. When it didn't melt her shrewd frown, he sighed, turned to the footstool beside the bookshelf and collapsed into it, his face in his hands. "…we are making a tremendous mess of this, are we not Eudora?"

"You can say that again'."


	3. Cruel to be Kind

_On why the Doctor didn't simply rip the talisman from Tiana's fingers._

* * *

Facilier. To facilitate. To make things easier. The right way was not always the easy way: in fact, it was usually the opposite. But people did love their shortcuts so. If everyone did their work by the book, his business wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in August.

The ladies and gentlemen of the scintillating mansions in St. Charles Street knew him as Dr. Facilier, peddler of gris-gris bags*, potions, voodoo dolls and conman extraordinaire – or at least that's what they told each other in drawing rooms and dinner tables and elegant masquerade balls. For when the company was bidden adieu to, the parents or husband or even children kissed goodnight and the curtains drawn, more than one of those elegant, god-fearing women would put away their French cloches and real ocean pearls to come to his door in the dead of night.

They'd never say so, but he could see it in the cards, in the curling ashes of the tobacco squid, in the shape of the divining shells, the diloggun: penitence and suffering and being in the world but not of it was good and well for the soul, but when Saint Joseph couldn't stop dear Henry from chasing the hired girls or Saint Monica would not make dear Richard stop giving his beloved Rita black eyes when he came home drunk, they would despair. And when he offered them the vicious revenge of Erzulie Ge-Rouge, the Red-Eyed, upon their unfaithful lovers and even the unbridled sexuality of Maman Brigitte, they were quick to pay up.

Of course, he would easily turn around and offer their husbands the favor of Maman's husband Baron Samedi, womanizer extraordinaire. It was a matter of who asked first…and sometimes, if he was really indecisive, who could pay better. It almost made up for not being able to conjure a thing for himself.

Almost.

Facilier. To facilitate. To find the loopholes and shortcuts.

Which meant that his undoing were those walking the straight and narrow. He'd believed this meant there never would be anyone capable of giving him the trip. But he'd been wrong. Oh, so wrong. Goodies did take their own sweet time to show up, but they were usually impeccably timed to knock carefully laid plans askew.

* * *

The first time he ever saw Eudora, whose name meant "generous gift", she already wore James Thompson's band on her ring finger. She was bartering for greens at the market, and were it not because the people felt it right in the gut to give a man wearing crocodile teeth a wide berth, she might have never seen her amidst the other shoppers. She had lifted her eyes for a fraction of a second, and he'd seen something like steel in her soul before she'd gone back to bartering down green bell peppers.

Steel was something he was used to seeing in women like her, women who not too many years ago would have been buying those peppers for Massa's kitchen and not for their husbands' table. He was not as old as Mama Odie, but he too had lived the days of whips, chains and desperation, and women who lived to see white streaks in their hair had that look of hers, like they'd been tempered by fire. But Eudora's eye had a glow of happiness and a glint of industriousness where the women of his youth (his real youth, not the extended one bartered from his friends) had the dull, haunted eyes of the zombies he would sometimes call up for a pretty penny. All work, all resilience, no joy.

The second time he had seen her, she'd offered him an apple. An apple might not mean anything to a Ponzi or a La Bouff, but it meant a very large something coming from an overworked, underpaid little seamstress. She'd thought he was shunned for his violet eyes, eyes that meant he was the offspring of something scandalous, and figured it could be the spoonful of sugar to make the bitter drought go down. Young, God-fearing Eudora Thompson wouldn't know he'd pulled out Booker Webb's corpse from its shallow grave with the same hand that touched her own when taking the little red fruit.

Facilier could not only count the kindnesses he'd received in his life, he could measure them too, and Eudora's outmatched the others by far (_generous gift, indeed_). But therein lay the catch, the cruelty of kindness, for Facilier was not a man used to generosity or self-denial, and found he would very much like generous gifts on a permanent basis.

It would be lies to say that he refined his art for love of her, because the demanding, selfish passion that settled in his chest could hardly be called love, to the point that gentle Oshún and peaceful Yemaya let his offerings intact. He had always wanted more, whether it be more tender mercies or more cold hard cash in his jacket pocket, but it would also be lies to say that he didn't think of curling a finger and summoning the respectable Mrs. Thompson away from her darling James one day, when he was too rich to be denied, like the plantation owners with their whips and their life-or-death powers. It'd be lies to say he didn't think of how James meant 'usurper' and how facilitating meant bypassing obstacles, and fast if you please.

But fast, when one was still a rookie, was bad. Fast meant recklessness. Fast was what got him, when Gabrielle Veilheux saw him ordering Abraham Mungin out from his grave an hour after the last mourner had left - he should have waited for dark, for the very witching hour of the night, even, but he hadn't, and now there was real reason to fear him. To the people of the Ninth Ward he became the Shadow Man, the man with the living shadow who'd give you what you wanted at the cost of what you had.

Eudora never spoke to him again, but neither she nor her husband ever crumpled under his gaze like so many others did. It was then that he learned that Jacob meant supplanter, but its modern derivative, James? The name James, in and of itself, meant nothing. Which meant that James would make whatever he would of himself, and of course unwittingly decided to make himself impervious to Facilier's influence forever when he chose 'hard worker'. And when he died his glorious death in the trenches, he left behind Tiana, whose name meant 'princess' and who frowned so viciously at shortcuts and rulebending, he could feel a physical pricking between his eyes whenever she so much as looked his way.

And she just _had_ to set herself up as best friend to Charlotte La Bouff. Between Tiana's unsuspecting spiritual bodyguarding and Charlotte's depressing lack of troubles to be facilitated from, Facilier considered the La Bouff fortune as distant a dream as Eudora had been.

And then out from across the sea came Prince Naveen and his Lawrence, carrying enough troubles to make up for a hundred decades of Thompsons.

He hadn't expected Tiana to be involved. He still couldn't curse her or even exert his physical strength against her, not without risking serious burns, but he could use his mirages on her. He hadn't been lying: her dreams were lofty and exquisitely substantial for such an assiduously hands-on girl. He was surprised when even his intimate knowledge on the subject of Thompson psyches failed, but for a minute it hadn't mattered: the girl had taken her little green fingers from his amulet for a few precious seconds, and that was all he needed.

But of course, he'd had to gloat. He'd had to rub it into James and Eudora's daughter that he'd won, despite the shunning and the looks, despite the terror and the talks of damnation. He had jabbed her with his cane, because he'd still burn at the touch of the sinless: but he'd gloat, he was lucky, strong, proud.

But proud, like fast, turned even old bokors with blood on their hands into rookies. Proud meant reckless. And Tiana managed to shatter the amulet.

The straight and narrow was a hard path to walk, but the easy road, the way of shortcuts and just desserts, was just a skip and a hop from the tunnel into ruin.

* * *

_*Gris-gris bag is a bag filled with sundry items and worn for protection. It can contain herbs, bones, clothing or bodily refuse from the wearer.  
*Massa = Master, spelled as it would sound with a heavy Southern accent._

_I drew on the phrase "I got hoodoo/I got voodoo/I got things I ain't even tried" from the song Friends on the other side for this. The way I see it, the good Doctor will give anything and anyone from any religion or pantheon a try: he'll be a friend to literally anyone on the Other Side who can give him something in return. But if voudu was the first thing he embraced, he'd probably consider himself a bokor, a voudu priest who works with the more sinister spirits, instead of just a general bad magician guy._


End file.
